Coos Bay Tom Loc: coos bay oregon

He was my cousin though he was an old man. He was proud in his way. He often would say "I'm 89 years old and I've never been arrested." He kept saying that from time to time as the years rolled past. Billy was raised by the cowhands on the ZX ranch near Lakeview Oregon. When he was 10 years old he was discovered by a couple of hands burying his parents who had both died of influenza. This was around 1906. They helped him finish the job and thought it best to bring him back to the ranch. They put him to work and he became a top hand. He on several occasions told me a story of a happening one day on the vast acreage of the huge ranch. He was with two older men and with them a horse for each plus an extra mount. He was about 12 years old at the time. They were tasked with bringing cattle down out of the hills where the streams had dried up in late summer and driving them to the water below. A cow will lay in the shade and die of thirst before it will go in search of water. They were riding the ridges looking down below for cattle when they came across a man who was butchering one of their steers. He was busy at his larcenous deed and did not notice the riders on the ridge above him. The two men told Billy to take his horses and go back to the ranch but he told me "I didn't -I wanted to see what they were going to do with him." His eyes got wide and he said "Believe it or not they hung him!" The men just left the unfortunate rustler hanging and finished butchering the steer. When they came up to the crest of the ridge with the meat they caught Billy still there. "We told you to go back to the ranch." and they both gave him a hard whoopin' for disobeying because they did not want a boy to see what they had done. I asked Billy if he went back to the ranch next time they told him to and he smiled and said "You bet I did." I went and saw him on his 100th birthday and again on his 101st. He still had that gleam in his eye and a story to tell.

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

Justice was swift but not always deserved in those days. My grandfather told me about when he was a young teenager in S. Dak in the 1890s; they caught a horse thief and was hanged on the spot in S. Dak.

One of my favorite movies of all-time is "The Oxbow Incident: a 1943 American western film directed by William A. Wellman, starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, and Mary Beth Hughes, with Anthony Quinn, William Eythe, Harry Morgan and Jane Darwell. Two drifters are passing through a Western town when news arrives that a local rancher has been murdered and his cattle stolen. It is a terrific story about vigilante justice.

bggamers Loc: georgia

They were raised hard back then but a whoopin never killed them and they grew up to be some of the best people you would want to meet unlike today if your going to be a killer or a thief I believe your born that way something in your brain is not connected right and they feel no guilt some are lead astray but feel guilty about what they've done those are the ones who when punished turn their lives around (personal opinion)

Coos Bay Tom Loc: coos bay oregon

An accurate opinion I might say.

Seth

I thought it was a great film, great story.

That said...

When I see some of the predatory animals the courts turn loose over and over or make eligible for parole in just a few years, from prisons that can, in turn, be too easily sued by inmates for violating their "prisoners' rights," good old fashioned seat-of-the-pants justice begins to look pretty good.

Legal justice was definitely more effective in the "old days", including when prisons were harsh, disciplinary institutions people didn't want to go back to no matter what, than the "liberal" courts/incarceration system now in place.

PeterS

Yup, likely the man was just trying to feed his family--should have driven the cow to his house before killing it--less he be killed himself.

Seth

How do you know he wasn't unmarried and merely too lazy to get a job, and was stealing because that's how he lived?

Had I been one of the hands, I'd've talked to him first to determine that, one way or the other. If he convinced me that he had a wife and children to feed and was desperate, I would have made sure his family was fed, and made him come to the ranch and work off the market price of the steer he'd killed.

If he turned out to be just a thief, however...

https://youtu.be/0gscut1p4kY

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

Now I know you are a bleeding-heart liberal. Making excuses as always instead of respecting another's property. Taking for themselves what they didn't earn.

Wonttakeitanymore

They should hang car thieves as horse thieves! They are stealing our horse power!!!

Wonttakeitanymore

God doesn’t make mistakes! We are all born into sin but always have choices!

Wonttakeitanymore

They had jobs back then too!

Wonttakeitanymore

Great solution!